As the impact of Trump’s big, bad bill becomes more widely understood, Vermonters will begin to see first-hand the difference between policy for the public good versus policy for the benefit of certain individuals.

In today’s Addison Independent, our reporters talked to administrators of county school districts to understand how they are trying to cope with the sudden withholding of $26 million of congressionally approved funding. The Trump administration decided to withhold the funding on June 30 for money that was already put in school budgets throughout the state and nation for fiscal year spending that began the next day. That the confiscation of funds already approved by Congress happened at the very last moment was deliberate insult added to injury — as if to make the point that the Trump administration can cause harm if it chooses to.

In this case, the funding was part of a broader freeze of more than $6 billion nationwide used to support after-school, teacher training, English language and a multitude of other educational programs.

Local school officials aren’t impressed.

“Some of the stuff they’re taking right now is stuff we’d already been told we were going to get,” said Mark Koenig, chair of the Addison Northwest School District (ANWSD) Board. “It’s in our budget, and now it’s been clawed back. So, we have a hole in our budget.”

ANWSD Superintendent Sheila Soule defined part of the impact. “What we’re losing is the money that we characterize as quality… The quality components of the education, the enhancements, the enrichment.”

Gabe Hamilton, director of learning for the ANWSD, pointed out the last-minute shenanigans of the announcement: “The timing of this was particularly challenging because the deadline for submitting our consolidated federal grant application was June 30, and the announcement came on June 30. Most people had already submitted the grant, so now we have to go back and redo the grant with far less.”

Is there any justification for the last-minute hold on funding? None that the administration has identified.

One might suspect the administration opposes any funding to help migrant workers learn English (even as conservatives insist migrants speak English, perhaps not connecting the dots that language instruction is a necessary step to that goal.) Or it could be the administration opposes any federal spending on after-school programs, imagining at least one parent should drop out of the work force during their children’s school years to be with them between 2:30 and 5 each afternoon. Or perhaps Republicans simply don’t believe teachers need professional training. In any case, it’s just another example of how this administration, and the Republican majority in Congress, has diminished education in America because their core concern is an educated public would not support policies that go against the public good.

It’s a political strategy that unfortunately has been more successful than one would hope: According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 30% of Americans read at a level expected of a 10-year-old, 54% of American adults read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, with nearly one in five (20%) reading below a third-grade level. On a global scale, Americans rank in the top 20-40 countries for literacy, math and science — an alarming ranking considering we increasingly live in a knowledge-based economy.

How Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” undermines public education is a good example of how the bill, which impacts almost every level of public services and public health, negatively impacts the public good. You won’t get that story on Truth Social, from Fox News or any pro-Trump propaganda outlet, but local readers should be able to figure it out for themselves.

The impacts are real, and they’ll be affecting all of us in ways that diminish the services Americans need, while shifting costs that local and state taxpayers will be asked to pay.

— Angelo Lynn